On Impact
by speakingintothevoid
Summary: Karen Page is fast becoming one of the top ballerinas in NYC when she finds herself in need of a boxing coach. Frank Castle has just about run out of reasons to get out of bed in the morning. Ballerina/Boxer AU, marginally less tragic than the regular U.
1. Chapter 1

Karen Page shivered into the dank little bar, the neon signs drawing her in from the cold like flickering firelight. She slid onto the bar stool with a low moan, rolling her shoulders back under her heavy coat. "I'm dying," she announced.

"I feel you," Matt replied, sliding her a beer with inerrant fingers. "Let's drink it off."

Foggy glowered at her as she took a swig. "You know, there is such thing as too far. How much time did you spend in the gym today?"

Matt chuckled. "Oh knock it off, Foggy. You're not a trainer anymore."

Karen took a gulp. "And you've admitted you understand nothing about what I do. Gym hours are not my primary concern."

"Yet another example of why ballet is not a real sport," Foggy said. "Unlike…"

"Nope," Karen shook her head, pulling off her gloves so she could grip her glass. "I'm not getting dragged into this again. Not another round of me explaining why pummeling people wildly over the head until they pass out has nothing on the intricate finesse of dance. Absolute muscular control will always be more difficult than brute strength!" but she was laughing in spite of herself.

"Oh, brute strength, is it?" Foggy was already getting drunk. "She says she doesn't want to argue, and then she keeps climbing back in the ring with me, Matt, what am I supposed to do?"

Matt shrugged, tapping his lip thoughtfully with his own bottle. "What if we taught her? One month of training and see if she isn't begging to take her argument back?"

"Matt…"

"What? I can still fight, Foggy."

"You know that's not what I mean, man. Karen's always been Karen. Able to focus on seventeen things at once. But you have to keep your head in the game with this law school stuff. It's only our first year!"

"Yeah, okay," Matt said, more tired than frustrated. "I'm gonna…" he gestured to the men's room before sliding carefully off his stool and making his way alone across the bar.

Karen chewed her lip, watching him go. It was the boxing that did it. A one in a million hit, right across the temple. It didn't look like much, but Murdock fell hard, crashing down the length of his body and hitting the ground open-eyed, staring. That impact was the last thing he was ever to see. It was the end of life for a while too, for him and Foggy both. The papers had a field day: "Newcomer Knocks Murdock's Lights Out."

Foggy had stayed by his side through the therapy, the braille, the crazy scheme to start law school at 30. Now he watched him walk across the bar just as sharply as he had watched him as his boxing coach, eyeing his balance, his stride. "Let's make it a wager," he said quietly.

"Hmm?" Karen asked.

Foggy nodded. "You train as a boxer for four weeks. At least two hours a day. At the end of that time, you come back and we'll talk. We'll see how long it takes for you to change your tune."

"Bold words, Mr. Nelson. Our history of wagers has not been a winning one on your part."

Foggy nodded. "This one I'm sure of. I just have one condition. You have to find another trainer." He lifted a hand as she opened her mouth to protest. "I can recommend some good people, but it can't be us. Look, Matt seriously doesn't need anything else on his plate right now. You know Elektra's back in town, pulling his focus. He hasn't been in school in years and he's working his ass off, but his braille isn't at half the speed he'll need it to be to pull this off. Just – don't tell him I said so, okay? He will pull it off, of course. He can do anything as long as enough people tell him it's impossible. But you find another trainer, and the deal is on. What do you say?"

Karen shook her head, gazing down at the bar with glassed over eyes and a small smile.

"What?" Foggy asked, "What are you thinking?"

She grinned up at him. "Imma kick your ass, Nelson."

She drained her beer as Matt appeared in the bathroom door again, and she darted in to kiss Foggy's cheek. "I can find my own trainer, though. Bye!"

She fluttered out the door as Matt sat down again. "Where's she off to now?"

Foggy chuckled dryly. "She scented a challenge and disappeared. You should really be used to this by now."

It was only nine when Karen arrived at the gym, so there were still a few boxers left circling bags. A couple of heads turned to follow her wispy figure as she strode between the rings.

A bald man with a skull covered in tattoos lifted his head at her with a low bark, "Hey, girlie, what the – hey. Hey, you're Murdock's girl, aren't you?"

She smiled, dropping down on the bench beside him. "How are you, Mike?"

He eyed her warily. "It's been a time."

"I need a coach," she said abruptly, "a boxing coach. Well… obviously. I need someone to teach me to fight."

"Somebody after you?"

She shook her head, biting back a grin. "No, it's a bet. Murdock thinks boxing is too hard for a ballerina. I'm going to change his mind."

Mike laughed, loud and sudden. "Alright, then. Let no one say Mike doesn't love a wager. You're sharp, flexible, you've got some muscle tone all over I'd say. But I don't think we can help you. All my folks are booked." He fumbled for a notepad in his track pants. "I can give you some names of other gyms."

"It has to be this one," her face was set in stone. "Please. I'll work early and late. I'll work around anyone's schedule. I've got money, plenty of money…"

"Well, money's not the issue, see? My boys and girls are tired at the end of the day. I pay them well. They just want to go home, have a life. I don't ask them for 'early and late'. You go two blocks down and you'll find a place where I know there's an opening."

"What about him?" Karen's finger aimed for a dark corner of the gym, lit up theatrically with a single dim bulb, where a man worked a bag, circling rhythmically.

Mike coughed. "Castle's not one of my boys. He's a fighter, not a coach. He just comes here late, works the bag for an hour or so. We don't talk to him, he don't talk to us."

"Frank Castle?" Karen asked. "I've heard Foggy talk about him. He's good, isn't he?"

"Look, you need a real coach, okay? Someone who understands your background, what you need. Maybe someone who, y'know, speaks every once in a while."

"I'll talk to him," Karen said, already getting up. "Will you let us train here?"

Mike sighed heavily, looking slowly between her and Castle. "Here," he grunted, fishing in his pocket again and twisting a key off a giant keyring. "If you're coming in late and early it won't much matter. You can pick up the bill later on. Assuming you get him to so much as acknowledge you, of course. And hey, when you see Murdock – tell him – well…"  
"I'll tell him."

There were a lot of strange things happening in the world lately, and Karen's own particular superpower was the ability to get people to do things for her. Mostly this was achieved through research and intuition, and as she paced the gym towards Frank Castle, she was trying to pull together what little she had heard about him. She didn't think she'd ever seen him fight as he hadn't been such a big name when Matt was one of the top fighters in the country. His meteoric rise in the sport had all happened while she and Foggy were sleeping next to hospital beds. Still, she knew Matt probably wouldn't have liked Castle much. His brutal, bloody style contrasted Matt's carefully calculated blows. It would have been an entertaining match. There was something about Castle's past that she was trying to remember now. Some heart-rending tragedy involving a family? A wife or child, maybe? It had been years ago now, not a breaking story, but the first couple of paragraphs in a bio piece.

Karen perched herself on a little stool behind Frank's back and waited, watching his shoulders surge as his fists lashed out and back. The image was intimidating, but uncomplicated.  
She said nothing, barely breathing as she studied his form, her body suddenly aching to try it herself, to show these guys what she could do.

The door slammed three times in the next half hour as boxers and coaches shouted, "See ya, Mike!" and headed into the night, weary shoulders bent under heavy gym bags.

Mike moved to his office to work on paperwork, checking out his little window every few minutes at the image of the ballerina gazing in silence at the scarred and muscled wreck of a man pummeling the same bag over and over. He shrugged one shoulder. Nah. No way could she talk him into it. Mike shoved some papers into a bag to take home and headed out into the night. She'd figure that out on her own, soon enough.

It was nearly midnight when Frank stopped, resting his gloved fists against the heavy bag, his forehead barely touching the leather. "What do you want?" he asked quietly.

"To win a bet," Karen replied.

Frank walked over to the bench, opened his bag and pulled out a water bottle. He drank for a while, then capped it. "You a reporter?"

"I'm a ballerina."

He looked her over slowly, carefully. "From the posters," he said.

Karen nodded. As soon as the ballet's PR guy had laid eyes on her sweet mouth and big blue eyes he had plastered her image all over town. "Karen Page. I need a boxing coach."

Frank took another drink. Then, "Mike has lots of coaches. I'm not one."

"I know."

He zipped himself into a hoodie and sat down, across from her but angled away.

She took a breath. "Foggy Nelson bet me that I couldn't learn to box. He says that dancing is easy and a month of real boxing would kick my ass. I don't like to lose bets." There was rock salt behind her eyes, belying the levity of her words.

"Then you should get a coach."

"I want you."

Frank sighed and stood up, heaving his bag over his shoulder. "Why?"

Karen stayed seated, looking up at him in supplication. "You're good. You're really good. And I can only work late nights and early mornings when you're already here. I like you because your fighting style is so different from what I've seen. I like you because you're not training anyone else so you'd have no distractions. I like you because I know my working with you would piss Foggy off. I'm in perfect shape, I've been an athlete since I was four years old, and I can pay. I can pay you really well."

"Money's not…"

"I need to train in this gym." Karen was standing now. She took a deep breath and pushed her hair out of her eyes, measuring her words before she spoke. "Look - Murdock won't come back here. He says he misses the fighting more than he misses his sight, but he won't come back. I just – I want him to be able to walk through the doors again. His father trained here, he trained here his whole life. He needs to come back. Even his therapist says so. If I train here, maybe it will coax him back. Mike's coaches are all busy so you're my only chance. I'm doing this, Castle, with or without you."

Frank laughed under his breath, glancing around the room. "What is this, you're in love with him?"

"He's my friend," she said. "And I love him as my friend, I'd do anything for him. You know what that's like, right?"

Frank looked at her long and hard. "I was a Marine." It was an answer.

"Help me. And I'll make it worth your time. If it's something other than money you need, I'll do my best on that as well. I'm not here to bargain. I'm here to beg. Mike gave us a key." She held it out between them like a contract.

Frank stood still for longer than she would have thought possible, his eyes on her. She focused on keeping her shoulders up and back, her breathing steady. "Have the door unlocked at 4 a.m. This is gonna kick your ass."


	2. Chapter 2

Frank woke up with something new fluttering in his mind. Ever since that day at the carousel, mornings had involved nothing more than shaking off the nightmares with dry mouth and buzzing head, feeling his aloneness stretch out from him like dark wings.

This morning, he had something different. Murdock's girl and that ridiculous bet gave him something to mutter about as he shrugged into his clothes and packed a bag. Was she actually going to be there? He remembered the stance of her, the set mouth and blazing eyes. Maybe. "I don't like to lose bets," she had said. "I'd do anything for him."

He finally brushed off the thought on the bus. If she wasn't there, he would work out as usual. No loss. Tomorrow he could wake again to the familiar emptiness.

It was all familiar. New York was wrung out dry in the empty hour after the clubbers had all stumbled home and before the joggers got up. The clustering remnants of humanity still clung to the alleys and street corners, but they shuffled away at Frank's heavy sloping gait. Cold and dark and alone was where he lived now, it was comfortable, but the glow of a streetlamp drew his eye at one point, its yellow light splaying out in the morning mist like blonde hair spread against a fine black coat. He blinked and walked on.

The gym looked equally deserted in the solid darkness. He shrugged one shoulder and went to unlock the door but his key clicked emptily in the lock. Pushing the door open he saw her, sitting cross-legged in one of the rings. She looked more like a sorority girl than a boxer, a blonde braid tossed over one shoulder while she clutched a monogrammed ceramic coffee cup. She bounced up when she saw him.

"Morning, coach!" she called across to him, and her voice splayed out in the darkness like the streetlamp. "I brought coffee!"

Karen was sore in places she hadn't realized even existed. She was still doing a full day's worth of ballet every day, and now, late at night, she was learning to move her body in very different ways. Frank was increasing her cardio and muscle mass as quickly as possible and she spent most of her time now alternating heat and cold on her muscles, eating, and sleeping. Frank, for his part, was learning to speak.

"Stop, stop, stop," he said, coming up behind her wearily. Karen dropped her fists, and pushed a stray tail of hair out of her sweaty face. The punching bag was barely swaying in front of her. "Where does the movement come from?"

"The heel," she chanted dutifully.

"And where does the power come from?"

"The hip," Karen swung her hip half-heartedly.

"The hip," Frank repeated. Her pushed her arms closer to her body. "Elbows in. Always in. You're throwing jabs, not hooks. Your elbows stay in. And once you've hit, they come back to your face."

He took her gloved hand and moved it to the bag and then back to her cheek, "From his face to your face, see?"

Karen nodded, scowling.

Frank dropped his ungloved hands to her hips, twisting her lightly. "You are not moving here enough. Everything comes from the hips. For a dancer, you're not moving enough." He shook her bicep between two fingers. "If you hit with your arm, this little arm, there will be no strength. You swing from the hip, your whole body behind the two knuckles in your hand. Force comes from focus. Alright?"

She nodded again, only just now catching her breath. "I've been on the bag for a week. When can I fight you?"

Frank half-smiled and shook his head. "When you can hit from your hip."

"I can't tonight, Foggy!" Karen was curled in the back of a taxi, jerking her hair into a tight braid. "I'm meeting Frank."

"This is the first time you've abandoned us for another man, you realize this?"

Giving up on the multi-tasking, Karen put the phone on speaker. "Is it sad that this is perhaps the most time I've spent with a man since I was sixteen? Not counting you guys?"

"Hey, we've agreed. We all suck at relationships. But I guess you're moving on now."

"This was your thing, Foggy! Your idea! I'm sticking with it, like I promised. And at the end of the month, you and Matt are coming to see me."

"Meanwhile you're moving like a geriatric," Foggy laughed. "I told you it was harder than it looks."

"Not harder. Maybe as hard. But I wouldn't know because I'm doing both at once. I'll be taking those two weeks off at the end of the month though. But yes, this man is a monster and he's kicking my ass."

"Well, that's good to hear. Matt and I were worried about losing our best friend status to this guy."

Karen kicked open the gym door and moved over to her bench to drop her bag. Mike waved from the office, but Frank wasn't yet there. "You never have to worry about that. He's nicer than he seems though."

"Well, given his nickname I'd only have to hope so. You know about his family?"

"I literally haven't had an hour to sit down since we met, so no research yet. I remember some kind of tragedy."

"His wife and kids all died at the same time. In front of him. About three years ago? Four? Gang-related, I think."

"Holy shit," Karen whispered.

The door jolted open behind her and Frank was inside, stamping his frozen feet. She looked at him, phone still at her ear, wet-eyed and stricken.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She shook her head. "He's here, Foggy, I'll call you after if you're still out."

"I'm the other man, now," Foggy said, tragically. "Feels kinda good actually."

Karen hung up and turned quickly, pulling her tape and gloves out of her bag. Frank was behind her instantly, a hand on her arm. "Karen, what's wrong?"

She shook her head. "No, it's not me. I… just heard some bad news about a friend of mine. Well, not news. It was something that happened long ago and I just didn't know about it."

He stayed still, hand on her shoulder. His hands were always on her now, but she didn't like the way this touch burned her skin, and she ducked out from under his arm. "Are you ready?" she asked. "It's been two weeks. I'm going to fight you today."

"Oh, yes?" he asked. "Wrap up, then."

She wrapped her hands carefully, crossing and looping the tape between her fingers and around the wrist, again and again. It had taken a week for her to memorize the pattern Frank preferred. Now her hands worked fluidly, binding her slender fingers into a sturdy knot. She watched him as she worked, watched the military precision with which he carefully folded his coat into his gym bag and rinsed out the empty protein shake bottle he'd drained on the train. All these little details, little rituals, they had slipped into a mental mosaic of the man she called 'coach' and all along she'd been missing the glue that held it all together.

Karen had never been married. Never even had a relationship that was moving that way. She'd never had kids, wasn't sure she wanted them. So her mind couldn't even begin to touch on what this man had lost.

She walked up to him to let him survey her tape job and he grunted to acknowledge it, his eyes tracking the pattern. "Left hand could be more snug around the wrist," he told her. "But it's fine for today."

"I'm fighting you today," she repeated. "I'm ready."

He looked at her and his eyes almost smiled. "Okay. Prove it. Come here."

He led her out into the ring and she bobbed up and down eagerly, wincing as she dragged her gloves over her taped fingers and strapped them on, her long blonde ponytail slapping her shoulders. She was determined to win the whole smile today, but being adorable wouldn't work on Frank. She would have to be impressive.

"Alright," he said, holding his bare hand out like a target, "give me a right hook."

She took a breath and swung, smacking her glove strongly into his hand, and he caught her wrist immediately, leaving her extended.

"That was okay," he said. "You swung from the hip, you were focused on that. But your elbow was too far out, your shoulders are too high, your other hand has dropped nearly to your chest. Your whole form has collapsed slightly. You twisted on the ball of your foot, but not far enough to use all the momentum."

Karen shrugged, pulling her wrist back. "Well, it was my first punch of the day. Give me a minute to warm up."

Frank shook his head. "This isn't natural for you. I've taught you to fake it pretty well, but it's not going to be smooth, not in two weeks, not in two months. You can't fight me, or Nelson or even Murdock. Not in a month."

"You're telling me this now. Two weeks in? So why are you doing this then?"

"My guess is that's what the bet was. Nelson wanted to show you this isn't easy, it's not something anyone can do in a month. You were doing this to get Murdock back to the gym. It wasn't about learning boxing anyway, I'm just showing you the ropes."

"Well, now I've got a taste for it," Karen clawed a strand of hair out of her eyes with her right glove. "I want to be good."

Frank shrugged. "Takes time."

He took a seat on the bench, letting her process the information. She came and sat down next to him, swinging one leg absent-mindedly. He'd never met anyone with more insistent energy. No matter how badly she pushed herself, these little stray movements never stopped. There was always something more to give.

"You answered the wrong question, just then," she told him, after a pause.

He looked a question at her.

"Why are you doing this? It's been almost two weeks now and still no comment from you on how I'm supposed to be paying you. Are you really just that soft-hearted?"

Three years, five months, two weeks and four days of emptiness. And then Karen Page had waited for two hours on a stool to talk to him about a wager and that next morning was the first day in all that time that he'd woken up with purpose. Something to think about, someone to help. He had poured himself into this, letting everything else fall by the way, shifting his schedule, his work priorities, everything. He fell asleep at night pouring over books and websites for boxing coaches, learning how to train. He had even started deliberately making errors with his own coaches to see how they corrected him, how they made him right. Of course he should have sent her to a real coach by now. She showed real promise and worked so hard. But he couldn't… couldn't let it go. Waif-y blondes had never been his type – it wasn't a sexual or romantic thing that was consuming him about this woman. It was something at the very essence of her that caught at him, the way her laughter faded in and out of focused scowls, the way she had danced up to him with his own monogrammed coffee mug on the third day after stealing his wallet to verify his middle name, the way her cheeks flushed with delight when he'd brought it with him the next day. The way she'd come up with insulting pet names for everyone in the gym and the way she fearlessly floated in and out of his personal space, casually bumping into and touching him without apology or fear of retribution. The way she stretched after a workout, her long arms and legs twisted into impossible positions, the sun sheeting through her hair as it spooled down her shoulders, the way she breathed into each stretch… he pulled up the train of thought and looked down at her. "Don't worry about it. I like having checks to cash in later with people. Now, do you want to train today or not?"


	3. Chapter 3

Frank swallowed hard against his collar. He stood in the darkest corner of the foyer, a tiny bouquet of flowers clutched in one hand, watching the rustling, sweet-smelling crowd pour past him.

"Wear a tie," Karen had said, a parting jab as she swung out of the gym that morning.

Frank was not wearing a tie. He had conceded to wear a jacket, but balanced this concession by wearing dark jeans and a t-shirt underneath. Now as he watched a line of elderly ladies in evening gowns parade past him, he tugged slightly at the jacket.

He had warned her. Recitals and performances were not places he felt comfortable anymore. As a dad, they'd been part of his routine, but now, he was something else. His dual identities of husband and father stripped away, he had taken their absence as a new identity. Not-husband and not-father, Frank Castle now existed as a being of absence. He had carved out his new place in the world by keeping himself in a tight circle, running from bed to gym to boxing ring and back to bed again. This closed loop was small and safe and kept him tired enough to lose consciousness on occasion. And that bare-boned and bare-knuckled existence shared nothing with this glittering foyer of lazy, opulent wealth. She couldn't have known what she was asking when she pushed the ticket into his hand three days before. "Wear a tie" – as if that was the aspect of this which worried him. "Dance was never my thing," he had told her, but that was a slight twisting of the truth. He and Maria had loved to dance. _Ballet_ was the thing he never understood. His mother had taken him to a Nutcracker performance as a child, his cousin's big debut as a third-year at her dance program, but it had seemed long and meandering at the time, full of nervous children and strutting teens. This was professional, sport and art combined, and Frank's identity of absence kept him crushed in the corner like the flowers in his palm.

"Holy shit, it's Frank Castle!" Foggy Nelson's voice cut through the haze and Frank blinked in his direction. Nelson was cutting inerrantly through the crowd, Murdock barely seeming to touch his arm. Both of them were wearing ties.

"Hey man, good to see you!" Foggy enthusiastically pumped Frank's hand in greeting as Matt smiled with vague courtesy. "I feel like I hear about you all the time nowadays."

Matt stuck out his hand for Frank to take it. "Glad you could make it, Castle," he said quietly.

Frank shook his hand and muttered something courteous but he was caught up in the memories of their last meeting years before, when he still had his family and Matt, his sight.

"How's she doing?" Matt asked. "We get all our information from a single source right now."

"She'll do alright," Frank said. "We're just two weeks in but she's a quick learner." The small talk felt stagnant in his mouth and he had a sudden urge to have her next to him, splicing her two worlds together with her natural cheery grace.

The lights in the hall suddenly dipped.

"Karen said she'd put you with us," Foggy said. "Front and center if you'll follow me. She'll be so excited you're here," he continued in a whisper now as a dangerously old man in a tuxedo clunked out on the stage. "She was eager for you to see this."

Frank sat down at last in darkness and wrapped his sweaty fingers around the tiny bundle of tulips in his lap. Tulips in every spring color, since they reminded him of her, slender and poised. Matt was carrying a full bouquet of what looked like wildflowers – Frank wondered for a sickening second if he'd picked them himself – and his own offer seemed pitifully small in comparison. How much did he know about the ballet scene anyway? Karen's world was tuxedos and three different chandeliers in the lobby. And somehow, she was carving out hours, morning and night, to beat herself up even worse in a downtown gym, taking the time to pick him up breakfast and coffee and staying late to help him lock up. Who the hell was this woman?

Karen was stretching backstage when her phone buzzed and she picked it up instantly. It could be Frank, maybe he was lost, or couldn't find parking, or had gotten sick and couldn't come…

Foggy Nelson: _Holy shit, Frank is better looking in person. Starting to see why you dumped us for him. I'm trying not to take it personally but he's literally wearing jeans and looking better than I ever have. We've got our seats. Break a leg!_

Oh. Something heavy spilled into Karen's stomach and she dropped the phone and tried to breathe through it. Frank was there. He would be there the whole time, watching her. He was sitting unsupervised with her two best friends and maybe her eyes would cut through the searing waves of light and see his face, blank and unimpressed, gazing back at her. Karen had been dancing in front of audiences since she was four years old, she ranked nationally among the best ballerinas of her age and was climbing rapidly, but this was a new kind of anxiety for her. She had to show him that her sport was similarly impressive.

A good punch is all about power and power comes from speed. Speed comes from momentum, momentum from rotation. A boxer swings from the ball of the foot, rotating and shifting body weight forward and up into the hip. This force is mirrored by the shoulder, which propels the fist at full power.

What Frank saw that night was a different form of strength. The strength to be slow, a foot curling slowly outward, each finger locked in place above the head. Every dip and curve perfect to the millimeter. Control and power expressed in slow, coiling tension, suddenly balanced by a burst of speed – a leap, a spin, a smooth collapse. Ballet was the combination of his favorite parts of her - her savage strength and the graceful ease with which she expressed it.

She took him away, out of the glittering room and out of the tight grey loop in which he lived his life. She pulled him, almost as quickly as her performance began, out of his gridlocked memories of war and death and despair. The orchestra soared and hovered, and she escaped him, somehow, to a different place. He left himself behind and fled with her to another world which she sketched out with the perfect lines of her perfect form and they lived the story together. She had taken him out of his safety net, if only for a few hours, and had shown him a place of greater safety.

He was still dizzy when they crowded into her little dressing room, Matt and Foggy wrapping her up and kissing her forehead like a small child. Then they dumped the flowers on her table and stepped back, Foggy glancing between Karen and Frank like a Regency chaperone, Matt standing with his head cocked to the side.

Karen smiled at her trainer, unsure of his reaction and aware of their audience, but he could only stare back. She was all unfamiliar in the half-light and heavy stage makeup, her hair stripped back tightly from her face and sweatpants pulled up over her costume. He could not unsee what he had seen. He would know her now as this creature of music and power and grace and she was a stranger to him.

"What did you think?" she asked, in a smaller voice than Foggy had ever heard her use.

"It was… you know it was the best thing I've ever seen. You amaze me. Daily." He stepped forward easily and put the sticky stems of his flowers into her fingers. "I'll see you at five," he said, and faded instantly from the room.

"Shit, that was smooth," Foggy commented when nobody moved for a minute. "Kare-bear, I've seen T _he Notebook_ at least fifty times so I'm certified to tell you that that right there was the single most romantic thing man has ever said to woman."

"Alright, Foggy, time to go," Matt said, laughing.

"No, man, you're missing this. Karen's still staring out the door like a wind just went over her. Who knew the man could talk like that?"

"I am not staring," Karen swiveled quickly, looking for an empty vase and hoping her thin costume was doing anything at all to cover the startled pounding in her chest.

Foggy crossed his arms stubbornly. "Um, no, we're talking about this at some point. You're doing a great job hiding your face and buying time, but Karen, this is a thing now."

"Shut up, Foggy, he was being polite. I told you he's a good guy."

"Um, no, definition of terms here – polite is holding the door for someone. Polite is thanking someone for the delicious food after eating the worst thing you've ever tasted. 'You amaze me. Daily.' That's not polite. That's not platonic. What do you think?" he asked, appealing to Matt.

Murdock was grinning. "Well, it's hard to say about things like that, isn't it? We came in here wreathed in flowers and kissing her forehead, so for some people that would be enough to assume. Just because he speaks eloquently doesn't mean there's a hidden meaning behind it."

Karen nodded. "Thank you. Exactly. Now the two of you need to scram so I can change clothes and pass out before I get up again at 4:30."

Foggy stared back and forth slowly between Karen's slightly flushed cheeks and Matt's focused interest. "Well Matt, at least you have an excuse. Karen, I guess you'll just be willfully blind. I suppose I'll just stand here in my rightness and be right all by myself."

"Not now!" Karen laughed, shoving them both playfully out the door. "Go be right somewhere else, I have to get home and sleep!"

She closed the door after them and her smile instantly collapsed. This was new. It was the first time she had looked this idea in the face and she didn't… Karen walked unsteadily to a chair and sat down. The fact was that Frank was older - how much older she wasn't sure. She didn't want to be sure. He had a boxer's face – it was hard to read his age in his features. The difference could have been two years or fifteen. Somehow, she preferred not to know. It kept her thoughts in flux, and provided a shield to defend herself with when she found her eyes lingering on his frame as he walked her through a difficult maneuver, or when he stepped out of the shower still pulling on his clothes. In her dancing, she had long been used to being handled and embraced and lifted by men, but when Frank's rough fingers landed so carefully on her hips, adjusting her form in front of the bag, the contact was tangible, breathless. These thoughts could sometimes be extinguished by the possibility that he might be twenty years older, and he was her coach, and he had experienced things far beyond what she could imagine. And age was the least of it – background, social status, interests… they had nothing in common. She knew how he thought of her, as a spoiled little girl, dabbling for fun in the game he had made his life. But Matt's face was still lighting up with interest every time she talked about her boxing, and he had to be the priority. Two more weeks, and she could be away from this confusion forever. Two more weeks to clear her mind and decide what to do.

In the meantime, her job was easy. Just don't think.


End file.
